“Magical expertise is not shown by the number of badges you can wear on your sleeve, the number of ‘initiations’ into a variety of groups, lodges, covens or whatever, but by your personal power, your ability to cope in trying situations and your genuine humanity to other people” – Marian Green, ‘The Gentle Arts of Natural Magic’, Thoth Books, 1987.

I’ve been around the pagan community for…a long time now, and in that time have been part of various groups, groves, Orders, colleges, training courses and suchlike. And each one of them has taught me various lessons in different ways of doing pagan stuff – but the singular lesson they all converge on, albeit unintentionally, for me is this:

Don’t outsource your magic.

“Be my witch”.

Three words that came into my mind as sharp as a sword, as bright as a flame.

Back at Beltane last year, I did a crossroads ritual to Hekate, a deity I’ve never worked with before then. I’m still not sure why I chose to reach out to her specifically, but hers was the name that appeared in my mind at the time. Six months on, at Samhain, I was doing a tarot reading to try and figure out the nature of this arrangement I’d got myself into. These were the words that came to me, not as an audible voice, but as a thought that felt very much like it was not one of my own.

That phrase reverberated in my dreams, and I have turned it over and over in my mind since then, as I’ve read all I can about Hekate and how to work with her. I think the challenge of the new year might just be to stop thinking about it and start actually doing it.